He believed men who were not married made better soldiers so he forced the military to ban traditional marriage.He also forced the Senate to deify the former Emperor Gallienus, including him with the Roman gods to be worshiped.

The Greek name for Christ, Χριστός begins with the letter “Chi” written as an “X,” and became an abbreviation for the name of Christ.

This is why X-mas became the abbreviation for Christmas.

In Medieval times, the “X” was called the Christ’s Cross, or as it was later pronounced, “Criss-Cross.”

The Christ’s Cross was a form of a written oath.

Similar to the ancient practice of swearing upon a Bible, saying “so help me God,” then kissing the Bible, people would sign a document next to the Christ’s Cross to swear before God they would keep the agreement, then kissed it to show sincerity.

This practice has come down to us as “sign at the X”, or “crossing one’s heart.”

This is the origin of signing a Valentines’ card with an “X” to express a pledge before God to be faithful, and an “O” to seal the pledge with a kiss of sincerity.

American decline is in the air. Fueled by massive, unsustainable debt, the United States is a jumbo jet overloaded with obligations, and short on the economic engines needed to propel it much further. In such spirit, we can look forward to the country’s bleaker future and ask ourselves a number of questions as if just following a plane crash: Was the fault one of design? Did the engineers err in drafting the plane’s blueprints? Was the plane pro … Read More